DVD review: No Country for Old Men

Monday 2 June 2008 06.14 EDT
First published on Monday 2 June 2008 06.14 EDT

It's great to have the Coens back on track, especially after the embarrassing misfire of this film's predecessor, The Ladykillers. Their first direct adaptation, from Cormac McCarthy's book, is also their first best picture Oscar winner, one of the film's four prizes. This time, the writer-director duo have pared things back to the bone. Scenes are short and economical, there's no music, and hardly a hint of Coen eccentricity peeping through the story of an implacable, methodical killer (Javier Bardem, also an Oscar-winner) and, in a trio of pursuers and pursued, sheriff Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin, a regular guy who has stumbled upon millions after a drug-deal shootout. On the DVD extras, Kelly Macdonald, a long way from Trainspotting as a thoroughly convincing Texan housewife, describes them as having their own genre (or john-ra, as she puts it). So what genre is this? Kind of a crime western noir horror comedy.

The film is no radical departure for the brothers, adept at tough crime thrillers in a harsh climate, as in their debut Blood Simple (also set in Texas) and their previous Oscar-winner, for its screenplay, Fargo, from the other end of the country. And the plot is not too dissimilar from Charley Varrick or A Simple Plan by the Coens' old buddy Sam Raimi. What makes this such a stand-out is hard to put your finger on - it just feels like an absorbing and tense two hours where everyone is absolutely on top of their job and a comfortable fit in their roles, especially Josh Brolin, who was brought up in Texas, and Jones, in a familiar role as a hard-nosed veteran lawman. The twist is that, for once, Jones isn't on top of things. Bardem's killer, using a variety of strange weaponry (bolt gun, cattle gun) is unlike anything the lawman has dealt with before, and unlike anything we, the audience have seen. He's kept unspecific in McCarthy's novel. Bardem, who describes the interchangeable duo as like "one person with two heads", makes him some kind of a misfit outsider in this context, but what kind is unclear. The film could just as well have used the title of its big Oscar rival, There Will Be Blood. The Coens have never stinted on gore, but this is their bloodiest film yet, even if nobody is fed into a woodchipper this time around.